In English polite form of address is "You" which is second person singular and plural. In Russian it is "Вы" which is plural second person.
In Spanish (and probably French and Italian) polite address ...

What is the most universally-used greeting when answering the phone (i.e. way to say, "Hello?")? Are there any circumstances where the greeting would be different (for example, when answering a phone ...

I've heard several different words used for 'to become' in Spanish. Obviously sometimes there are specific verbs to use, like 'enfadarse' means to become angry, but often you need to use a verb that ...

Suppose you see a mother with a laughing little 2-year-old. In English, we might exclaim, "how cute!"
I've had trouble saying this in Spanish. The word "cute" means something like "beautiful", but it ...

Setiembre is only used in Peru, AFAIK, but I wonder if there are any other countries where setiembre, as opposed to septiembre, is also valid.
RAE links the definition of setiembre to the definition ...

Many (most? all?) Spanish words containing the letter h come from corresponding Latin words containing the letter f. Through what process did /f/ get softened to /h/? During what time period did this ...

I know home translates as casa or, in some contexts, hogar. But both these terms refer to a more literal idea than I'd like to use at times. They both seem to refer to the actual house.
Let's imagine ...

In school, I learned that the Spanish past tenses were called preterite and imperfect in English, and preterito and imperfecto in Spanish. However, in talking to native speakers I've run across other ...

In English there are several ways to refer to people who speak Spanish or are from a Spanish-speaking country: Hispanic, Latin, Latino, Chicano, Spanish-speaking, etc.
What equivalent terms exist in ...

Admittedly, it has been a very long time since I've studied Spanish, but I distinctly recall that we always used "¿Que hora es?" for "what time is it?".
However, on a trip to the Dominican Republic, ...

I have always thought of the expression of "por cierto" as meaning "certainly" or "surely." It certainly "looks" that way (for certainly). And even Google Translate gives it that meaning, as well as ...

Everybody agrees that the Spanish digraphs "ch" and "ll" used to be officially separate "letters" up to the time the RAE changed the rules of Spanish alphabetization in 1994.
But when it comes to the ...

In English, some nouns have regular plural forms ending in -s or -es and fewer are irregular. Fish in the plural is still fish while child becomes children.
In Spanish, nearly all nouns are regular, ...